“In its fine print, it essentially defanged the DEA’s ability to deal with these large shipments of drugs,” Bredesen said.

“There are several bills in Congress right now to overturn that. I will tell you the very first thing I am going to do as a U.S. senator is sign on to one of those senate bills.”

Bredesen made this announcement during a Nashville summit on the opioid crisis hosted by Healthy Tennessee, a nonprofit health care education group. The summit was scheduled to include presentations by the top candidates in Tennessee’s competitive races for governor and U.S. Senate.

At the same event, Bredesen’s opponent, Republican U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, said she would advocate for a federal three-day limit on opioid prescriptions for acute pain with exceptions for cancer and hospice patients.

“We do need to have these strong initial prescription limits to prevent Tennesseans from going home with a bottle of pills that they don’t need,” Blackburn said.

Controversy over 2016 drug law

U.S. Senate candidate, former Gov. Phil Bredesen addresses the opioid crisis facing the state during the Healthy Tennessee conference at the Hermitage Hotel on Friday, Aug. 24, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn.(Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean)

Bredesen’s first-act promise was to join an effort to reverse the Ensuring Patient Access and Effective Drug Enforcement Act, a 2016 Blackburn-backed law that has become controversial.

Last year, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" revealed that the law had hamstrung the Drug Enforcement Administration by making it virtually impossible to freeze suspicious narcotics shipments from pharmaceutical companies suspected of supplying pill mills with painkillers.

Blackburn was not the author of the law, but she did co-sponsor it and speak out in favor of it on the House floor.

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Once passed, the law raised the legal bar that the DEA needed to meet to halt a drug shipment the agency suspected would end up on the black market.

Previously, the DEA could freeze a shipment that was deemed an “imminent danger,” but under the new law, the drugs needed to pose “an immediate threat.” That small tweak of words, whistleblowers have said, made it the shipments impossible to stop.

Last October, about two weeks after the investigation published, Blackburn defended her role in passing this law, saying her support came from a sincere effort to make sure that people with a legitimate need for medicine do not lose access to prescription opioids.

Blackburn said any negative impact on the DEA were “unintended consequences,” and she vowed to help lead the effort to revise the law.

Several bills to restore the DEA authority, introduced by Democrats, have been stuck in congressional committees for months.

During a brief interview on Friday, Bredesen seized on the lack of action.

"She said ‘this was an unintended consequence, and we will fix it,’ but that was 300-odd days ago, and nothing has happened,” Bredesen said. “It doesn't cost a dime, you don’t have to get out the federal credit card and it’s a significant step forward.”

After a separate campaign event later in the day, Blackburn said she had not taken action on the law because the DEA was supposed to give Congress a report about its impacts but has failed to provide guidance to lawmakers on the matter.

"When they give us a change they want, we will take the action," she said.

Blackburn noted that the change came after unanimous bipartisan support from lawmakers and was enacted into law by former President Barack Obama.

Blackburn backs prescription limit, national education campaign

U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Brentwood, and the GOP nominee for the U.S. Senate addresses the opioid crisis facing the state during the Healthy Tennessee conference at the Hermitage Hotel on Friday, Aug. 24, 2018, in Nashville, Tenn.(Photo: George Walker IV / The Tennessean)

In addition to supporting a three-day prescription limit, Blackburn said during the summit she would also advocate for a national education campaign that starts in elementary school and focuses on the dangers of opioid abuse and fentanyl.

She also expressed support for Congress establishing a “national standard” for recovery residences.

“I think it is so important that we do this so that Tennesseans who become addicted are going to have access to an environment that puts them on a path to recovery instead of one that places them on a path to relapse," Blackburn said.

Since her campaign began last year, Democrats have tried to paint Blackburn as beholden to pharmaceutical companies.

Blackburn has taken more than $800,000 in political donations from those with ties to the pharmaceutical industry since 2002, according to OpenSecrets.org, a transparency website run by the Center for Responsive Politics.

Blackburn has said allegations that these donations influence her legislation, along with calls for her to return the money, are “absurd.”

Dean: Expand Medicaid | Lee: Work together

The opioid summit also included brief speeches from Tennessee gubernatorial candidates Karl Dean and Bill Lee. Dean, a Democrat who spoke first, argued the state had sabotaged its ability to respond to the opioid crisis by failing to expand Medicaid under a plan proposed by Governor Bill Haslam in 2015.

“We are not going to solve this issue through incarceration,” Dean said. “We are going to solve this by treating this as a mental problem and making treatment available. And having access to Medicaid dollars is absolutely essential, and that should be one of the first things we do.”

Moments later, Lee advocated a comprehensive response to the opioid crisis, saying it was too complex to be tackled by government or private sectors alone. Lee referred to the opioid epidemic as “maybe the greatest crisis of our day,” but did not mention any specific policies or actions to combat the epidemic.

“Government can’t solve this. The private sector can’t solve it. Law enforcement can’t solve it. We can solve it, but it will take a concerted effort of everyone coming together,” Lee said.

Reporter Joel Ebert contributed to this story.

Brett Kelman is the health care reporter for The Tennessean. He can be reached at 615-259-8287 or at brett.kelman@tennessean.com. Follow him on Twitter at @brettkelman.